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Maybe you already know about the Alt-Right political movement. I've been researching it for only a few weeks now. Its footsoldiers seemingly consist of tech-savvy young white males who freely and obscenely express a desire for racial identification and segregation. They also uphold a crude sense of male superiority over women, not necessarily in terms of intelligence or political rights, but in more psychological matters, often subjecting females to sexual hazing and mockery rituals.

I have read some articles and got a little first-hand experience in online chat forums. If you visit the image-message board "4chan /pol/", you will almost certainly experience an overwhelming display of vulgarity, web slang, coded messages, board bullying, anonymous trolling, trash talking, racist banter, sexist jokes, nationalistic rhetoric, occasional expressions and discussions of actual philosophy, as well as the many artistic products of a robust meme factory.

For the most part, these footsoldiers, or "autists," as some call themselves, operate anonymously online, in great hordes. They swarm more obscure chat rooms in dark corners of the Internet, and then spread out to places like Twitter and Facebook to conduct "memetic warfare" on "normies," or the general population of people like those in The Matrix who haven't been unplugged from their unreal, virtual reality. You see, we normal, ignorant folk need to be awoken to the real reality of the fundamental importance of racial politics. We need to be "redpilled" and "unplugged" like the heroes in The Matrix.

But first the Alt-Righters have to get our attention, and that is where tactics come in. One effective tactic is the use of memes, or intriguing, perhaps shocking, messages that are spread through popular social media and call attention to bread crumb trails leading back to the wild and frenetic caverns of the Alt-Right. The memetic phrases and attractive images are tailored for young, intelligent, hyper-active males. As the rabbit hole gets deeper, these messages become more and more racial, sexual, and political in nature. And this is when the real socialization and indoctrination process begins.

The allure and charisma of the Alt-Right autists in places like 4chan is real and visceral. An uninitiated observer must simply marvel at the creativity, pace, and output of their online society. Young people, with curious and confused minds, will be tempted to join in on the fun, especially if they wish to rebel against the anti-white, anti-male ideologies, movements, and policies of the Establishment. The rebellion is real to these boys, because Establishment "shills" regularly raid these boards in an attempt to "correct the record" and exert influence. And even if there are no shills, the autists themselves will anonymously role-play the enemy, in order to keep the masses in fighting form.

Another tactic being employed is the use of "crowd sourcing" in order to rapidly produce valuable media products which appeal to news agencies and intellectual-types. This is how I was pulled deeper into the rabbit hole very recently while looking for analysis of the Podesta Emails released by Wikileaks. At first I noticed that the so-called "mainstream" news sources seemed remarkably uninterested in reporting the contents of the emails. Being curious, I went to the Wikileaks website but found the volume of emails there overwhelming. But then on Wikileaks' Twitter feed I saw a link to a Reddit forum that, through crowd sourcing, had already produced a fairly detailed and referenced explanation and analysis of Podesta's emails. Indeed, they have produced a forum thread for each day's batch of releases.

After learning what I could about the emails, I started to wonder about the people who produced this work, which at times seemed sloppy and inaccurate, as if purposely done to mislead those who only read the analysis and didn't bother checking the referenced emails for themselves. The group was called r/The_Donald, and some members were indeed very biased and ungenerous toward the Clinton camp. Though others were more grounded in reality and pointed out some mistakes in the group's reporting.

Researching this group ultimately enlightened me to the existence of the Alt-Right and more hardcore hangouts like 4chan /pol/. The group says things like, "4chan has weaponized autism, but The Donald has weaponized shitposts."

A "shitpost" is an insincere social media post intended to shock or disrupt the flow of a conversational thread, and it often carries some sort of Alt-Rightist meme or bread crumb trail leading one deeper into the rabbit hole of racial and sexual politics. The descent seems at first like a free-wheeling slide into a productive, creative, non-PC world where everyone is free to curse and be themselves, no matter how obscene and crude. But eventually it becomes a world where sexist, racist, white male bullies verbally abuse and excommunicate those who refuse to conform. This hardcore socializing happens primarily in the darker corners of the Internet and spreads outward as the memetic warriors grow in number and claim new territory.

These shitposting meme brigaders find easy pickings among two generations of white males whom the New Left and modern Establishment have previously and currently condemned as intrinsically racist and sexist. For decades, these victims of the Establishment have been made ready for the Alt-Right ideology. And they are actively taking on the corrupt government in power--and preparing to replace it with a segregated republic!

As Objectivists, we must actively differentiate ourselves from these despicable race-based collectivists, and all of us must learn how to battle and push back the storm of shitposts and meme trails. For, the shitstorm is already upon us, and it's already having a devastating impact on the conservatives and Republican Party. Every professional and amateur intellectual should be concerned with accurately assessing the nature, ideas, and actions of the Alt-Right, and critically attacking them with logical and historical arguments.

We should also expect the Left to adopt these tactics too, if they haven't done so already. It's going to be one giant shitstorm coming from all directions, and it won't be confined to the Internet for much longer.

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A specific kind of troll, one with a very sinister purpose of pushing racial politics upon the masses in a sort of fishing operation, in the hope of attracting young, white men to their cause.

One thing I forgot to mention before is "lulz." There is a popular meme that trolls do it "for the lulz." That they shitpost around the internet because it's hilarious to mess with other people's lives and conversations. Some people think trolls are a bunch of immature boys and young men pulling pranks in the social media world. And that's probably true for many cases. But if you go to Urban Dictionary and look up "i did it for the lulz," this is the top definition:

______

"I did it for thelulz" (IDIFTL) is a catchphrase which serves as an explanation for anytrolling you do or any internetdramayou cause.

Before Hitler shot himself, it has been recorded that he said "I don't understand. I did it for the lulz." It took 5 years for people to notice that killing Jews is lulz worthy, making Hitler ahead of his time.

______

If you search Google for that phrase, the top two results are Know Your Meme, which will show you images of Hitler, and Urban Dictionary, which gives you a pro-Hitler example sentence.

Pulling pranks might be a motivation for some trolls of the Alt-Right. But I suspect there is more to it for those with any sort of sophisticated understanding about the movement. The idea of "doing it for the lulz" could be a means of disguising the tactical purpose of trolling, which is fishing for possible sympathizers and recruits to the racist cause. They have to increase their numbers somehow, and they probably can't walk the neighborhood knocking on doors yet, like the Jehovah's Witnesses. So instead they troll the Internet chat rooms and discussion forums.

Edited October 20, 2016 by MisterSwig

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As Objectivists, we must actively differentiate ourselves from these despicable race-based collectivists, and all of us must learn how to battle and push back the storm of shitposts and meme trails. For, the shitstorm is already upon us, and it's already having a devastating impact on the conservatives and Republican Party. Every professional and amateur intellectual should be concerned with accurately assessing the nature, ideas, and actions of the Alt-Right, and critically attacking them with logical and historical arguments.

First step is NOT to vote for Trump.

Step two is not to make it look like they're correct but go too far.

"The descent seems at first like a free-wheeling slide into a productive, creative, non-PC world where everyone is free to curse and be themselves, no matter how obscene and crude. " No, claiming that "being yourself" and cursing is somehow productive and creative is part of the problem.

It makes me wonder if you're an Alt-Righter yourself.

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Here's the way I see it personally: It's a very dangerous world out there. As much as we as civilized people may try to pretend differently, it really is a Darwinian world of tooth and claw, of "hang together or hang separately". As for alt-rightists, I can definitely see where they're coming from: the likes of Julius Malema, Robert Mugabe, Khalid Muhammad, and their followers would do horrible things to white people if they could get away with it (look those names up if you don't know who they are). Objectivism on the whole, however, has chosen to join the chorus of Establishment voices crying "racist!" and "alt-right bigot!" at these sorts of people.

Again talking to the Original Poster, one of my favorite Objectivist quotes is "guilt is a rope that wears thin". Meaning -- if you want to attract these people, you have to explain to them how Objectivism is going to help them. They're not going to be "shamed away" from "collectivism" that you don't approve of. That may or may not be desirable to you; there may or may not be "easier fish" to go after.

Edited October 21, 2016 by Dustin86

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Here's the way I see it personally: It's a very dangerous world out there. As much as we as civilized people may try to pretend differently, it really is a Darwinian world of tooth and claw, of "hang together or hang separately". As for alt-rightists, I can definitely see where they're coming from: the likes of Julius Malema, Robert Mugabe, Khalid Muhammad, and their followers would do horrible things to white people if they could get away with it (look those names up if you don't know who they are). Objectivism on the whole, however, has chosen to join the chorus of Establishment voices crying "racist!" and "alt-right bigot!" at these sorts of people.

Objectivism didn't "join" anything. Objectivism was opposed to racism long before the Establishment. Ayn Rand was crying "racist", "bigot" and "primitive brute" at "those sorts of people" back when they were still running the government.

By the way, why are you saying "those sorts of people"? Why are you pretending you're not one of them?

I understand where you're coming from. I hope you will look at my track record of posts on this forum and realize that I am against any form of collectivism, especially the racist type. I'm trying to help expose the tactics of these white nationalists, because I'm afraid that they have a real plan for using the Internet to increase their numbers, and that plan seems to be affecting American politics right now, by wooing many young conservative minds to, at best, the idea of racial segregation, and, at worst, the idea of racial purification. This is horrible, unlike anything I've heard from the far Left, who, despite some racist ideas, still accept an integrated society.

As for voting for Trump, I'm seriously considering changing my mind now. I was never for Trump because of his character or affiliation with white nationalists. I based my decision solely on the Supreme Court picks. But I was ignorant of this Alt-Right threat until a couple weeks ago.

I'm trying to figure out how a Trump or Clinton presidency would affect the rise of white nationalism in America. If Trump is elected, then obviously the Alt-Right has a semi-sympathetic POTUS. I'm not sure if Trump is actually a racist, but he's almost certainly a sexist and nationalist. More moderate Republicans will probably join with Democrats in order to counter the rise of white racism within the conservative ranks. Oddly, that might be the best way to stop, or at least slow down, the evil movement.

On the other hand, if Hillary is elected, what will the country's focus be? We will have a politically corrupt, scandal-ridden POTUS of the Establishment, whom a large portion of Republicans want thrown in jail. This plays into the narrative of the Alt-Right reactionaries, and might make it even easier for them to recruit normal conservatives and radicalize them into white nationalists.

We have a very serious problem, I think. We actually have racist nationalists impacting one of America's major political parties, and it's happening, in large part, because of what the opposing party says and does to white males.

As for your interpretation of my quoted description, I was trying to describe how the descent down the rabbit hole must "seem" to young, confused men, not how it actually is as we know it. Sorry, that was unclear.

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This is horrible, unlike anything I've heard from the far Left, who, despite some racist ideas, still accept an integrated society.

MisterSwig,

I'm sure I would need an explanation for this statement, although it seems to merit some kind of clarity. Anyway, I'd rather rebuttal of some other points in your commentary:

1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

As for voting for Trump, I'm seriously considering changing my mind now. I was never for Trump because of his character or affiliation with white nationalists. I based my decision solely on the Supreme Court picks. But I was ignorant of this Alt-Right threat until a couple weeks ago.

Why should this Alt-Right (alleged) threat make any difference?

1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

On the other hand, if Hillary is elected, what will the country's focus be? We will have a politically corrupt, scandal-ridden POTUS of the Establishment, whom a large portion of Republicans want thrown in jail.

It is doubtful that there will ever be a collective focus in the United States, unless you are considering another major terrorist attack within our borders, or something equally apocalyptic. The only thing this country focuses on are the personal problems related to each individual. Maybe I would include the annual Christmas celebrations or Superbowl Sunday as matters of collective national focus. The impression I have is that far too many Americans aren't even interested in this year's national election, resulting from the lousy choices. As for the popular notion of jailing Hillary Clinton, it is an unlikely outcome, more like wishful thinking for anti-establishment folks. However, if there is an investigation of the second President Clinton, I would not be surprised or disappointed, and could not suppress a bit of satisfaction at the prospect of diminishing her agenda. I seriously doubt if she would ever be removed from office.

1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

We have a very serious problem, I think. We actually have racist nationalists impacting one of America's major political parties, and it's happening, in large part, because of what the opposing party says and does to white males.

How can you say this Alt-Right thing is a serious problem; have their actions merited any criminal investigation? Don't you suppose that they would be investigated at the first violent incident associated with them? I don't see any obligation on my part to "doing" anything other than ignoring these websites; if any people were actually intent on criminal activity, it's a police matter. As for changing the American political landscape, most voters are too intelligent to fall for such rubbish as conspiracy theories and cults.

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It's a very dangerous world out there. As much as we as civilized people may try to pretend differently, it really is a Darwinian world of tooth and claw, of "hang together or hang separately". As for alt-rightists, I can definitely see where they're coming from: the likes of Julius Malema, Robert Mugabe, Khalid Muhammad, and their followers would do horrible things to white people if they could get away with it (look those names up if you don't know who they are). Objectivism on the whole, however, has chosen to join the chorus of Establishment voices crying "racist!" and "alt-right bigot!" at these sorts of people.

...if you want to attract these people, you have to explain to them how Objectivism is going to help them.

Clearly Objectivists should rethink debate tactics in the face of these new threats.

However, you seem to have gone awry at the most basic, metaphysical level. You talk about a "very dangerous, tooth and claw Darwinian world," in which we "hang together or hang separately." That sounds very much like a standard collectivistic malevolent universe premise, which Rand rejected, and so do I. Hopefully you will read Rand more thoroughly on the benevolent universe premise. Maybe she can convince you. I've never had success changing someone's mind about that. But I always give it a shot.

The world, itself, is a beautiful place in which man has a real opportunity to survive, flourish, and find happiness. Sure, there are serious problems that arise and real threats to our basic, peaceful condition, such as the emergence of racist nationalists of all colors who wish to divide and control mankind rather than unite and free it. But in the face of such problems and evils, never forget that our fundamental existence is one of a rational animal in an indifferent world. And this is important: in order to survive we must never forget to think rationally. For if we succumb to illogical ideas, we, in essence, have corrupted our own natural functioning as reasoning beings.

There are evil ideologies everywhere. Black nationalists. White, yellow, and brown nationalists. However, the answer to Evil 1.0 is not to adopt Evil 2.0. The answer is to remember, to imagine the beautiful, peaceful world, to think rationally, and to promote Good 1.0.

We all see how some white nationalists are allegedly reacting to anti-white forces. They feel that the continuation of the white race is under threat, and they want their own country. This, however, is not the answer to the problem of anti-white movements. History has shown that race-based collectives always get annihilated by values-based collectives. Race is not as powerful a glue as values. Neo-nazis imagine a harmonious white nation, while completely ignoring the fact that humans will always choose values over race. How long before the white utopia disintegrates from within? One, two, three generations? How long before it wages war on its own dissenters? How long before it blames the rest of the world for its own stupidity? How long before it is annihilated by a values-based collective?

Even if you can't see the moral problem with white nationalism, perhaps you can glean the political problem from the many historical examples available.

To briefly address your other point, of course we need to show people, not only young white males, how Objectivism can help them. Again, you seem to accept an invalid premise: that we haven't been showing them.

The problem is that too many people reject what we show them. They read Rand's books and still jump into the arms of collectivists. And that's why we need better tactics and fresh arguments.

Edited October 21, 2016 by MisterSwig

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How can you say this Alt-Right thing is a serious problem; have their actions merited any criminal investigation? Don't you suppose that they would be investigated at the first violent incident associated with them?

An ideological movement need not be violent in order to pose a serious political threat. They only need to prove that they can influence a significant portion of society. We can debate how much influence the Alt-Right has on the culture. But I'm settled on the fact that they are a real threat.

Plus, much of the Alt-Right operates anonymously online and in secret meetings. So it's hard to know which Neo-nazi criminals who do get arrested are actually part of that movement. There are also anti-Establishment computer hackers who get caught occasionally. Some of them are probably Alt-Right criminals. A few of the leaders have identified themselves openly and written articles and manifestos. I vaguely recall at least one of them getting arrested for making terrorist threats.

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As for your interpretation of my quoted description, I was trying to describe how the descent down the rabbit hole must "seem" to young, confused men, not how it actually is as we know it. Sorry, that was unclear.

Gotcha. Wasn't sure. Yeah, it may seem liberating to say whatever you feel without restraint, but that falls into bigotry and hate real fast. Even when it only starts out as a joke.

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An ideological movement need not be violent in order to pose a serious political threat. They only need to prove that they can influence a significant portion of society. We can debate how much influence the Alt-Right has on the culture. But I'm settled on the fact that they are a real threat.

Plus, much of the Alt-Right operates anonymously online and in secret meetings. So it's hard to know which Neo-nazi criminals who do get arrested are actually part of that movement. There are also anti-Establishment computer hackers who get caught occasionally. Some of them are probably Alt-Right criminals. A few of the leaders have identified themselves openly and written articles and manifestos. I vaguely recall at least one of them getting arrested for making terrorist threats.

MisterSwig,

I don't think I'll spend much time debating the national influence of an online chat group until they come out from under cover anonymity. Violent or non-violent, organizations with no public visibility have little influence on the electorate. The police also operate anonymously and in secret when dealing with threats such as you've described. Let them write all manifestos they wish; they only makes it easier for the police to identify the real troublemakers. These sorts are less dangerous than the lone-wolf psycho-killers.

I'd be better served promoting constructive ideologies or philosophies, such as Objectivism, rather than taking any actions in opposition to any non-constructive cabal. What sort of actions would you recommend for thwarting these Alt-Right interlopers?

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I don't think I'll spend much time debating the national influence of an online chat group...

Characterizing the Alt-Right as a harmless "online chat" group indicates to me that you have no clue, as I had no clue two weeks ago.

Read this article. It's a comprehensive guide to the Alt-Right, written by an Alt-Righter. A little lengthy, it's the clearest summary of the movement that I've found so far. It should convince you, at minimum, that the movement is larger than a "chat group." It's developing a whole philosophical system, complete with a god-like figure named Kek who distributes magical meme powers to the Alt-Right mob.

You could also listen to an archive of Yaron Brook's recent radio show, in which he also identifies the Alt-Right as a threat.

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Clearly Objectivists should rethink debate tactics in the face of these new threats.

However, you seem to have gone awry at the most basic, metaphysical level. You talk about a "very dangerous, tooth and claw Darwinian world," in which we "hang together or hang separately." That sounds very much like a standard collectivistic malevolent universe premise, which Rand rejected, and so do I. Hopefully you will read Rand more thoroughly on the benevolent universe premise. Maybe she can convince you. I've never had success changing someone's mind about that. But I always give it a shot.

MisterSwig, I'm glad you brought up the terms "benevolent universe premise" and "malevolent universe premise", because this basically encapsulates why I don't believe in Objectivism.

World history, or even the history of just the past 100 years, pretty thoroughly refutes the Benevolent Universe Premise and pretty thoroughly enshrines the Malevolent Universe Premise.

Every alt-rightist I have ever met also holds a Malevolent Universe Premise and has a negative view of human nature. Every one, including the non-racial-nationalist ones such as me1, although "degrees of malevolence" vary.

Now that I think about it, there may be a fundamental incompatability between Objectivists and the alt-Right, because now that I think about it, the fundamental thing that unites all of our disparate movements is what you call the "Malevolent Universe Premise", and the related fact that we take the negative view of human nature.

However, you need not worry, at least for any time in the seemingly foreseeable future, about any alt-right movement becoming a mass-movement in America, because Americans are addicted to optimism for the most part, even in severely troubled times such as the Great Depression and Great Recession.

Also, most alt-right movements (outside of the racial nationalist ones) are not looking to become mass-movements. For the most part, they are looking to purchase their own "neo-medieval" kingdoms in which kings, with the advice and consent of their aristocracies, will have full rights of governance.

1 The term "alt-right" used to also encompass monarchists, various people who are anti-democracy, sometimes also various anti-feminists, etc., but recently the term seems to have been wholly subsumed to mean "white nationalists", a lot of this is thanks to the media.

Edited October 22, 2016 by Dustin86

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Dustin, what do you believe Objectivism means by benevolent and malevolent universe premises? I want to double check you are talking about the same things we are. When we talk about these things we are talking about the basic set up of the universe itself, like the way physics works and how people relate to it, not how people have been treating each other. The malevolent universe premise is the notion that the universe has an actual intent, a will, and its intent is to thwart us at every opportunity, to actively work to see individual people fail. It's going to change itself willy nilly as necessary to achieve the purpose of screwing people over. The benevolent universe premise is that the universe has no intents, it just is what it is, it just stays working consistently according to its nature. We do not mean that the universe has an intent to change itself to try to help anybody. We call this "benevolent" simply because we can work with a consistent and, therefore, relatively predictable universe, it's much more manageable and comprehensible. We can make plans and probably even a fair deal of progress toward goals in a universe like this, even though success may still be no guarantee and we still ultimately end up dying. We can live in a "benevolent universe" even while a ton of people are irrational and malevolent assholes creating tons of problems and suffering that the universe itself didn't impose upon people.

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Characterizing the Alt-Right as a harmless "online chat" group indicates to me that you have no clue, as I had no clue two weeks ago.

Read this article. It's a comprehensive guide to the Alt-Right, written by an Alt-Righter. A little lengthy, it's the clearest summary of the movement that I've found so far. It should convince you, at minimum, that the movement is larger than a "chat group." It's developing a whole philosophical system, complete with a god-like figure named Kek who distributes magical meme powers to the Alt-Right mob.

You could also listen to an archive of Yaron Brook's recent radio show, in which he also identifies the Alt-Right as a threat.

The reason why I'm not worried about these people is because their "army" is virtual.

By virtual I don't mean that they use the Internet to organize: I mean that the organizing being done ISN'T REAL. Think about it: everyone has a username, no one knows who each other are, almost no one ever reveals anything personal about themselves. So these aren't people who are actually connected in a meaningful way. They're not an "army", they're users of a service that helps them create a virtual army in an online world 100% disconnected from their real lives.

How is that different from players in an MMORPG who form an in-game army to slay an evil dragon? The only difference I can see is that this is even more embarrassing. None of these people would ever even consider the possibility of transposing that "army" into a real life political organization, where they would need to use their real names, and reveal what they've been doing online to their work/school colleagues, friends, and families.

At least with a traditional MMORPG you occasionally hear stories about two people who met in WoW, ended up getting married, and are actually proud enough of their epic nerdiness to have the news do a story about them. You can't even do that, if the place you met in was an alt-right MMORPG, anymore than you could if it was a bdsm themed one.

Edited October 22, 2016 by Nicky

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I touched on that point earlier, mentioning the cloak of anonymity. You expanded on that fact, the fact that the same anonymity that protects them prevents them from creating a genuine political movement. And nice job. However, after reading the article submitted by Reidy, it appears there may be a more sinister aspect to consider. That article was a bit disturbing. If these fanatics can terrorize and vandalize the tech equipment of individuals they deem worthy of such harassment, they will present a threat to professionals at work thwarting their efforts, or free-speech on the internet. This cyber-terror is bad enough. It could result in another justification for more advanced cyber-policing, something that could then be abused for the benefit of established politicians with the authority to abuse such policing. And the lone-wolf psycho-killer has greater re-enforcement supporting his paranoid delusions. While I don't regard the Atl-Right as a major contributing factor to the potential fall of Western Civilization, it could be a contributing factor to the decline.

MisterSwig,

The source of this Alt-Right is little more than the same race-based ideology that inspired the Ku Klux Klan and the Third Reich with the unrestrained freedom provide by the internet. With the advantage of historical perspective, I'm not so concerned about the creation of an out-in-the-opened political movement emerging from the Alt-Right. Yet, the challenges I mentioned above merit concern, at least in the short term.

I will ask you again: In your opinion, what actions if any should be taken to prevent further damage?

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MisterSwig, I'm glad you brought up the terms "benevolent universe premise" and "malevolent universe premise", because this basically encapsulates why I don't believe in Objectivism.

...Now that I think about it, there may be a fundamental incompatability between Objectivists and the alt-Right, because now that I think about it, the fundamental thing that unites all of our disparate movements is what you call the "Malevolent Universe Premise", and the related fact that we take the negative view of human nature.

However, you need not worry, at least for any time in the seemingly foreseeable future, about any alt-right movement becoming a mass-movement in America, because Americans are addicted to optimism for the most part, even in severely troubled times such as the Great Depression and Great Recession.

I will note this down as yet another failure to turn a malevolent-universer. How many of you Alt-Right trolls are working this board?

Also, I'm not falling for your "don't worry about the Alt-Right" meme. Even if most Americans were addicted to optimism, that doesn't preclude them from surrendering to the threats of the Alt-Right or falling victim to the movement's hopeful dream of a shiny new white America.

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I'll take a moment here to address Nicky and Repairman's point about the Alt-Right being primarily an anonymous online force, and therefore not a significant enough real-world threat to warrant drastic concern or action.

First of all, we need to stop imagining these Alt-Righters as some Internet phenomenon that's separate from our physical, daily reality. The Internet is the greatest communication tool ever invented since the telephone. Such tools are used to spread ideas to real people holding those phones or sitting at a computer table. It doesn't matter if they are anonymous users of those tools, they are still real people receiving and digesting ideas.

Since about the year 2000, white nationalists have been organizing and recruiting intelligent, young, white males online. These are Internet personalities with exceptional computer skills and a voracious hunger for new ideas. But they are also real people who have real lives, girlfriends, jobs, friends. They attend concerts and parties. And they look for each other at certain social gatherings, like a Trump rally or gun show.

They move through this non-Internet world while partially self-censoring their speech, because some of their ideas would still be quite shocking. The uninitiated citizen, or "normie", will be presented with different waves of the ideology, just as it was done online. I believe we are experiencing one of the very first real-world waves, which is an attack on the Establishment. "The Establishment is in bed with Wall Street." That's a meme! A meme to condition us to accept the next memetic wave: "The Jews control Wall Street."

That is the power of ideas. It's the power of the Alt-Right philosophy. It's the power of the Internet communication tool.

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I will ask you again: In your opinion, what actions if any should be taken to prevent further damage?

This thread is an example of the first step that needs to be taken. We need to stand up to the Alt-Right online and expose their trolls. We need to understand their ideology and attack it furiously. We must figure out their tactics and online weapons, and expose them very publicly, in order to help others resist and return fire.

On the political front, we have no choice but to side with the Establishment, despite its corruption. I think we have a better chance of working with and influencing moderate Republicans and Democrats than we'll ever have with the Alt-Right.

At the moment, it's absolutely crucial that we push back against the anti-Establishment memes pouring out of the Far Right crusaders.

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In the future I might write a detailed analysis of memetic warfare. But for now I hope you'll Google search some anti-Establishment and Wall Street memes. You'll notice how clever these Alt-Righters are in ironically combining their message with popular cultural symbols and movements. I won't pollute this board with their propaganda, but here is one example of how they used the BLM's popularity to inject their views into the conversation.

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More needs to be said of the political philosophy of the so-called alt-right*.

This is one of the most revealing things I've ever seen:

13 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Every alt-rightist I have ever met also holds a Malevolent Universe Premise and has a negative view of human nature. Every one, including the non-racial-nationalist ones such as me1, although "degrees of malevolence" vary.

Now that I think about it, there may be a fundamental incompatability between Objectivists and the alt-Right, because now that I think about it, the fundamental thing that unites all of our disparate movements is what you call the "Malevolent Universe Premise", and the related fact that we take the negative view of human nature.

What are the logical consequences of a philosophy that takes a "negative view of human nature" (a malevolent people premise)? The first thing to go will be individual rights. A negative view of human nature implies that there's no real basis for holding the non-aggression principle: that one ought to deal with others on the basis of consent.

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Democracy sucks, the strong should rule the weak, and we could use a good old-fashioned dictator to clean up this mess.

Here is a great article by Andrea Castillo discussing the alt-right neoreactionaries:

A puckish new brand of right-wing radical subverts the postmodern power machine each day over Twitter and RSS for fun and praxis. It’s a real hoot to watch. These rudely triggering firebrands are denounced by the people who matter as wrong-thinking zealots of the most problematic variety—to the masochistic vindication (and occasional sacking) of our impish dissidents. Their freakish messages seem almost tailored to demand attention in our outrage-driven world of social media signaling. Libertarians, meet the neoreaction.

Remind you of someone?

The political philosophy of the alt-right is monarchist. If that seems weird or obscure to you, think of it in these terms: what they desire is an authoritarian strong-man to oppose the Establishment Left. That should not be an obscure idea at all, at this point.

What's interesting is the origin of this political philosophy; quoting from Mencius Moldbug, the father of neoreactionary political philosophy:

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That leaves libertarians. Now, I love libertarians to death. My CPU practically has a permanent open socket to the Mises Institute. In my opinion, anyone who has intentionally chosen to remain ignorant of libertarian (and, in particular, Misesian-Rothbardian) thought, in an era when a couple of mouse clicks will feed you enough high-test libertarianism to drown a moose, is not an intellectually serious person. Furthermore, I am a computer programmer who has read far too much science fiction - two major risk factors for libertarianism. So I could just say, "read Rothbard," and call it a day.

On the other hand, it is hard to avoid noticing two basic facts about the universe. One is that libertarianism is an extremely obvious idea. The other is that it has never been successfully implemented.

This is not an oddball political movement that's come out of nowhere - the predecessor of this political philosophy is none other than the quintessentially D2 anarchocapitalism of Rothbardian libertarianism.

Think about it - what is the next logical step down the path of D2 politics? It's the disintegration of the non-aggression principle itself on the basis of a malevolent view of human nature.

Continuing from Castillo's article:

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Understanding Moldbug’s Cathedral is key to understanding this Dark Enlightenment. Think of it as a public-private partnership that promotes and protects the entrenched secular Puritan paradigm (long story) that neoreactionaries believe runs the world.

The "Cathedral" that Moldbug discusses in his writing is the new secular "religion" that inhabits the media, Hollywood, academia, big government leftists, etc., that propound postmodernism, feminism, egalitarianism, democracy, etc.

Note how this fits with the narrative of how the election is "rigged" against Trump, "a public-private partnership" which includes at its forefront "the media".

Neoreactionaries see themselves as explicitly "enlightened", and "beyond libertarianism":

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Think of the neoreaction as an early attempt to build a kind of “meta-politics without romance.”... It extends our toolkit ... beyond analyzing simple economic class to consider culture, status, and tribal political behavior... With their own broadened focus, neoreactionaries believe they see the writing on the wall that we libertarians are simply too scared or myopic to consider.

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Unrelenting democracy combined with short-term demographic trends render the libertarian political project doomed...they do not harbor our Hayekian sentimentality for the transformative promise of rigorous liberal intellectualism. Many find our unusual reverence to abstract market forces to be shallow, degrading, or even autistic.

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They will defend what even libertarians find indefensible: sexual restraint, gender specialization, temperance, ethnic exclusion, and nationalism. Our great-grandparents’ legacies, more or less.

One last thing I'll point out from this article, quoting from the "Dark Enlightenment" writer Nick Land:

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If reaction ever became a popular movement, its few slender threads of bourgeois (or perhaps dreamily ‘aristocratic’) civility wouldn’t hold back the beast for long

Well what we see right now is reactionary political philosophy becoming a popular movement in the Trump campaign. The threat is real, and we've been warned: its few slender threads of civility will not hold back the beast for long.

Dismissing these people as "trolls" and attempting to silence them is extremely foolish; you are cutting yourselves off from the very people you need to be persuading.

On 10/21/2016 at 6:39 AM, Dustin86 said:

if you want to attract these people, you have to explain to them how Objectivism is going to help them. They're not going to be "shamed away" from "collectivism" that you don't approve of

As Peikoff identified in DIM, we've been on a "distintegrating" (D-type) trend in our society for quite some time, and this is the next logical evolution of D-type political philosophy. I think in light of the apparent size and popularity of this mass movement as we see in the Trump campaign, we need to be re-evaluating what was already a very dubious prediction at the end of his book, that society will devolve into the previous, unmixed "stable state" of the M2-type. On the contrary, what we are seeing right now is the progression of the D-type trend into the unmixed "stable state" of the D2-type. That is a much more credible prediction of where society is going now, and we need to be ready for it.

* the article quoted above identifies the original meaning of the term "alt-right"; it's an umbrella term that included the "manosphere", "neoreactionaries", HBD (human bio-diversity), the "orthosphere", the "Dark Enlightenment", etc.

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This motley band of techno-futurists, traditionalists, seduction artists, funnymen, reluctant Sedevacantists, inconvenient ethnonationalists, monarchists, communitarians, general heretics, homebrewed evolutionists, and one dedicated Jacobite to guide them all is perhaps easier for libertarians to initially understand through what they commonly oppose [the "Cathedral", as explained above] than for what they separately advocate.

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Dismissing these people as "trolls" and attempting to silence them is extremely foolish; you are cutting yourselves off from the very people you need to be persuading.

You're free to try your hand at "persuading" die-hard malevolent universers and Alt-Right trolls. I think that if you go to places like 4chan /pol/, and witness the meme war first hand, you might realize the futility of debating them. We need to focus on much more important things than having pointless discussions with our sworn enemies.

As for the DIM talk, you make some interesting points, but I'm gonna reread Ominous Parallels and DIM Hypothesis before giving you my take on that.